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Opinion
NYT
We need to talk about Margaret Sanger.

For the 11 years that I’ve been involved with Planned Parenthood, founded by Sanger, her legacy on race has been debated. Sanger, a nurse, opened the nation’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1916, and dedicated her life to promoting birth control to improve women’s lives. But was she, or was she not, racist?

It’s a question that we’ve tried to avoid, but we no longer can. We must reckon with it.

Up until now, Planned Parenthood has failed to own the impact of our founder’s actions. We have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate “product of her time.” Until recently, we have hidden behind the assertion that her beliefs were the norm for people of her class and era, always being sure to name her work alongside that of W.E.B. Dubois and other Black freedom fighters. But the facts are complicated.

Sanger spoke to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan at a rally in New Jersey to generate support for birth control. And even though she eventually distanced herself from the eugenics movement because of its hard turn to explicit racism, she endorsed the Supreme Court’s 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, which allowed states to sterilize people deemed “unfit” without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge — a ruling that led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of people in the 20th century.

The first human trials of the birth control pill — a project that was Sanger’s passion later in her life — were conducted with her backing in Puerto Rico, where as many as 1,500 women were not told that the drug was experimental or that they might experience dangerous side effects.

We don’t know what was in Sanger’s heart, and we don’t need to in order to condemn her harmful choices. What we have is a history of focusing on white womanhood relentlessly. Whether our founder was a racist is not a simple yes or no question. Our reckoning is understanding her full legacy, and its impact. Our reckoning is the work that comes next.

And the first step is making Margaret Sanger less prominent in our present and future. The Planned Parent Federation of America has already renamed awards previously given in her honor, and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York renamed its Manhattan health center in 2020. Other independently managed affiliates may choose to follow.

Sanger remains an influential part of our history and will not be erased, but as we tell the history of Planned Parenthood’s founding, we must fully take responsibility for the harm that Sanger caused to generations of people with disabilities and Black, Latino, Asian-American, and Indigenous people.

Sanger thought birth control would liberate women, and in so many ways it has. According to a University of Michigan study, the availability of the birth control pill is responsible for roughly a third of women’s wage gains since the 1960s. Reassessing Sanger’s history doesn’t negate her feminist fight, but it does tarnish it. In the name of political expedience, she chose to engage white supremacists to further her cause. In doing that, she devalued and dehumanized people of color.

We will no longer make excuses or apologize for Margaret Sanger’s actions. But we can’t simply call her racist, scrub her from our history, and move on. We must examine how we have perpetuated her harms over the last century — as an organization, an institution, and as individuals.

What we don’t want to be, as an organization, is a Karen. You know Karen: She escalates small confrontations because of her own racial anxiety. She calls the manager. She calls the police. She stands with other white parents to maintain school segregation. And then there are the organizational Karens. The groups who show up, assert themselves, and tell you where to march. Those who pursue freedom and fairness, but also leverage their privilege in ways that are dehumanizing.

And sometimes, that’s how Planned Parenthood has acted. By privileging whiteness, we’ve contributed to America harming Black women and other women of color. And when we focus too narrowly on “women’s health,” we have excluded trans and nonbinary people.

As we face relentless attacks on our ability to keep providing sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, we’ve claimed the mantle of women’s rights, to the exclusion of other causes that women of color and trans people cannot afford to ignore. And when we are rightfully called out by other leaders in the movement for reproductive justice who have pushed us for years to do better, we cry. In doing so, we’re failing in our mission to care for all the communities we serve.

We are committed to confronting any white supremacy in our own organization, and across the movement for reproductive freedom. We pledge to fight the many types of dehumanization we are seeing right now: the dehumanization of Black and Latino victims of police violence such as Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and too many others. The dehumanization of transgender people whose health care and rights are being denied in states across the country, and who face attacks not just from the right but also from trans-exclusionary radical “feminists.”

Some might see this as virtue signaling, but Planned Parenthood is taking this work seriously. Our senior leadership team is diverse. We have invested in training designed to give everyone, from the board room to the exam room, a foundational understanding of how race operates. And we are establishing new diversity, equity and inclusion standards for affiliates seeking to be a part of the Planned Parenthood Federation.

Achieving health equity requires fighting the systemic racism that creates barriers to sexual and reproductive health care. The pandemic has laid bare racial disparities in health care that we also see in who is most affected by increased abortion restrictions and in skyrocketing sexually transmitted disease rates.

As the nation’s leading provider of sexual and reproductive health care with a presence in 50 states, Planned Parenthood has an obligation to change how we operate. We must take up less space, and lend more support. And we must put our time, energy, and resources into fights that advance an agenda other than our own.

Margaret Sanger harmed generations with her beliefs. In our second century, Planned Parenthood has a chance to heal those harms. Reckoning with Margaret Sanger is one thing. We also need to reckon with ourselves.




Alexis McGill Johnson is the president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

How dare anyone talk about Josef Mengele's sister like that.

I see you finally saw the light.

The progressive left has a quite a job to reckon with Sanger who is/was so admired.
Naturally the cancelling process began with:

Planned Parenthood Quietly Aborts Annual ‘Margaret Sanger Award’


https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/23/nolte-planned-parenthood-quietly-aborts-annual-margaret-sanger-award/

I don't think that people who support PP know Sanger's history. It is about time they denounced her.

This is great news. I look forward to Planned Parenthood relocating all their offices from poor brown and black neighborhoods to wealthy white neighborhoods.

If you really want to reach the urban population,
Shouldn’t you start an organization called Unplanned Parenthood???

Her and Henry Ford were tight friends in thought. Those thoughts are still being used if not in belief then in actions. 77% minority.

Would be nice to see incentives for FAMILIES not single moms, and going to work not more money for being unemployed....

That sounds like Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.

New unbiased research proves that parentless children fare much better in life...

I heard BLs no longer M

You sure you don't mean BMW's?

Ford was an avowed anti-Semite, but I'd still buy a Ford (not really) as I do not believe that the present corporation does not emulates his beliefs...
Like wise, I don't judge PP based on Sanger, but on its current beliefs.

But they’re most famous for their “baby in a blender” technique...

^ Pro abortion bilboard candidate.

Actually, they're all pink... I think I said as much in an earlier post...


And you're still the #1 candidate for that bilboard btw.

Is it though? This whole idea of having to go back through history to apologize for every moronic thought or deed by anyone is ridiculous. It's the same thought process that has idiots wanting to destroy statues and rewrite the history of this country.

Was she a racist? I guess so I don't know much about her. Does that taint everything Planned Parenthood has done from it's founding up until today? It seems so... but, it shouldn't. Should they apologize on her behalf with every new generation? Let's call it every 15 years... every 15 years PP should apologize. The U.S. should apologize for slavery every time we elect a new president. Blah Blah Blah. It happened. It wasn't our fault. Our only responsibility should be to REMEMBER so, we don't allow things like that to happen again.

BTW Robert I expect you to apologize to me on the next Vherf for what lawyers and judges have done in the past... You can start with an apology on behalf of the lawyers and judges who presided over Buck vs Bell. Seems reasonable... right?

How ZRX of you.

Stop making sense Celtic.

Where’s your sense of PERPETUAL OUTRAGE???!!!!!!!

Reminds me of the Tommy Boy joke with the Butcher...

https://youtu.be/CnXZVtcryBA

There are books written about her, her cause and her work. There's the internet to run on to hit a cursory search and have that at your fingertips. In this case we have the words coming right out of her mouth.

“We must discourage the defective and diseased elements of humanity from their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning.”

Here she's advocating eliminating the handicapped and mentally ill by killing them before they reproduce. So, in this is she the arbiter of some pure "master race"?

“The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”

“We propose to hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

There's no hidden meaning here. At all. It's black and white clear as crystal. There is no mistaking the intent. Can you fathom if America had taken her completely at her words and followed through with them? They were baby stepped and still in operation today though. She advocated putting her butcher shops in poorer neighborhoods by design. She targeted her audience with precision. Today, its mainstreet and vogue. No stigma associated with it.

“The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

I'm going to say, at the time when she was alive...farming was a "family" business. To this day it feeds America. Also, Catholics not practicing child birth methods tended to have larger families. Can we reach a compromise with her words that make her attack a core family and their religious beliefs? I really don't know what else she means with a statement like that.

“The government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws the breeding--with a breakneck rapidity--of idiots, defectives, diseased, feebleminded, and criminal classes. Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation of these classes. Year by year their numbers are mounting. Year by year more money is expended . . . to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.”

They're called hospitals, jails and prisons Margret. I'm beginning to believe she hated competition in the entire "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" thingy that all citizens of America enjoy. I cannot fathom a world were the reverse is celebrated. "Death, Slavery and the Pursuit of Despair". Who in their right mind would start a revolution and the birth of a nation predicated on that?

“We can all vote, even the mentally arrested. And so it is no surprise to find that the moron’s vote is as good as the vote of the genius. The outlook is not a cheerful one.”

Remember when they called W a chimp and all his supporters morons? Yeah. That got us to Obama. Not ready for primetime but we got 8 years of it. There was very little criticism of his administration because immediately you were branded a racist. He gave a keynote speech and awarded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the very first Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award. You can't make this stuff up! THIS really happened. The first black American President awarding the deceased father of the Civil Rights Movement that ushered in equality an award from an institution that wanted them dead. Sanger wanted both of them dead.

Dr. King wrote, “Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by non-violent, direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.”

That struggle for equality is not over and now we are at one of those rare moments where we can actually transform our politics in a fundamental way. But it’s going to take people as resolute as Mrs. Sanger and Dr. King—people like your own Cecile Richards—it’s going to take young people like Ariana. It’s going to take millions of voices coming together to insist that it’s not enough just to stand still. That it’s not enough to safeguard the gains of the past—that it is time to be resolute and time to march forward.

Talk about being tone deaf and pandering only for the pro-abortion bloc he would willingly sacrifice his own race by giving away awards to a real leader from an avowed racist's platform. How degenerate does one have to go to do that, to not recognize the inherent evil and to not have the common sense to turn his back from this? So, I can see how the above quote fits...Obama gave way to Trump and that brings us even lower to Biden. We're living in a comparison universe of "Idiocracy" and its really happening!

“The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, the simpleton, the weakling, and the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers--intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, literally threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying get.”

“Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism.”

This brings me to the point where it's been discussed on this board before. Wheelrite was knowledgeable on Sanger and it struck a chord with me. I reached out and PM'd him through this site. We exchanged messages and eventually phone numbers. He was passionate about how this individual was allowed to become accepted based on her belief structure of judging entire races of people and their abilities with a desire to kill them all. Take a look at almost every Democrat and they will be an avowed PP supporter. The rabid ones would claim outlandish things like In a speech to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Awards Gala, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she admires "Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision." Secretary Clinton said she is "really in awe of" Sanger for Sanger’s early work in Brooklyn, New York, "taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions."

Sanger?!? The very same person that the Nazis looked to for guidance for the "Final Solution" with the Jewish people celebrated? Yet, there she is tearing down race AND the Capitalism. She's advocating for a state ran kill machine!

“The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devestating curse on human progress and expression. Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering.”

No, she's baring it all with unvarnished glory. Accept and complete her mission or you're an undesirable. A Deplorable if you will...see how the pervasive mentality seeps into the Consciousness of Reality? Its here and now as acceptable as going to a church Bible study. I miss Bill. On this topic we could talk with each other and even though we agreed we would show each other this and that and "did you know" banter. I understood him and it was a Top 10 moment for me with my personal relationship with the CBid forum and being a BOTL was meeting him...several times, but it was the back channel PM's phone calls and emails that we shared. We were aligned on this blight of Mankind. I'm not looking for any kind of apology for her. History glossed over what and who she was to usher in her belief system. Monetarism with a twist of Death at the American taxpayer's cost. You can't opt out. If you're against it, you pay for it. That is the tragedy of it all.

Where are you on abortion, a rhetorical question?

Some percent of abortion supporters actually believe in rights of a Mother to kill her unborn child, after all, the Government has no place up a women's skirt so to say. Limited government, possibly libertarian types.

Men that are want to avoid responsibility for children resulting from their trysts.

People/organizations/businesses involved in the abortion business that profit from abortion.

People that want to limit certain populations or the human race, in a more subtle way than out genocide.

Liberals that blindly support abortion, because that is what all the other liberals are doing, women's rights and all, never mind that some those aborted babies would have grown up to be women.

People that believe abortions is a standard form of birth control, which it is not.

Last, but not least, some that deep down in their heart wish they had never been born. Their deep seated anger makes them ardent, outspoken and down right aggressive supporters of abortion as a way to get back at society, or anyone that disagrees with them on abortion, for their very birth.



I'll be right up from and say I'm in that first group. Abortion should be legal, limited and rare. There just is no logical reason for it to be otherwise.

I love answering rhetorical questions!!!


Personally, I think it's cheaper to pay for abortions than it is to pay for welfare.

You're encouraging these young people to suck it up and essentially throw away their dreams because they more or less made a mistake. Do you even realize how selfish that is on YOUR part?

So if you're going to put me in a camp that you specified (a pretty narrow list btw), it would probably have to be the government doesn't have any right forcing them what to do. Another camp you missed, is I don't consider them a human at the time they get aborted... science and stuff. I don't believe two cells automagically obtain a "soul" at the time of conception... seriously, it's quite literally two cells.

What about all those other cells that die? You know, all the ones that you shot into socks and napkins over the years... don't you fell bad for those cells? Don't those cells have rights too?

Cell Lives Matter man.

What about all those eggs that go un-impregnated... what a waste of human life. So many precious eggs so callously flushed down the toilet EACH AND EVERY DAY!!!!

Yeah... the conversation at this point is stupid. We actually know how that sh*t works now... it's not like it was in the dark ages where they disavowed any knowledge that didn't start with "The Lord said".

Ya...OK I guess Benny has defined what a non-person is to him.

On a more serious note, Judge Andrew Napolitano explains how the Supreme Court circumvents the killing of America's most innocent and what class of citizen could be next.

https://youtu.be/eslTecXBWxM

That an apology tour isn't needed.

I NEVER said you agreed to a damned thing did I?